Conditions: Perfect - sunny
Air Temp: 7 deg C
Sea Temp: 1 deg C
Wind: Light and variable
Sea State: Slight
Visibility: 150 kms
Barometer: 977 mb
Latitude: 64 deg 44 mins South
Longitude: 63 deg 17 mins West
Wednesday February 28th, 2001
1000 hrs: There were stars out during the night and we awoke to the sun coming over the tops of the mountains, with patches of blue that have increased all day to the point where it is now an almost totally clear sky.
The sun seems to have given the wildlife new vigour. The crabeater seals were very active this morning and if the left-over krill meals scattered everywhere are anything to go by, they are gorging themselves.
Some ice floes were full of seals. There were seals asleep on rocky outcrops, seals asleep floating in the current with just their heads showing and seals asleep on the gravel beach amongst the penguins. Those not basking in the sunshine were waiting their turn.
One seal lay wounded on the beach with a large chunk out of its side – perhaps a bite from the leopard seal that passed us by yesterday evening.
As well as the crabeaters – the most prolific mammal in the world apart from man – there were many fur seals and penguins, and the minke whales kept us enthused as they came past right near Seamaster’s stern. I stood high on the guardrails and was able to see the full magnificence of one such whale just under the surface. They also appear to be feeding, with our anchorage being a favourite at the moment. The krill are back. Everything that feeds on the krill is making the most of it.
1200 hrs: After a morning of some of the crew snorkelling with the crabeaters, we up-anchored for the first time in several days and are now headed southwards down Errera Channel. We will then go across the Gerlache Strait towards Neumayer Channel, leading down between some magnificent mountains to Port Lockroy. Here we will again pick up Chris Coffin who was able to organise a one-way trip from Ushuaia on the small cruise ship the Multanovskiy. He will stay with us until we return to Ushuaia in a few weeks time.
It is a brilliantly sunny afternoon. It is very warm on deck, with hardly any wind.
It is almost shorts weather whilst we are motoring with the wind from behind us. Almost, but not quite.
1530 hrs: Port Lockroy is only an hour or so ahead around a few corners.
Port Lockroy was used by the whalers of long ago and bones still litter the beaches there, a testimony to man’s actions of the past for all to see (see Log no. 48).
Port Lockroy was named by French explorer Jean Baptiste Charcot in 1904. His expeditions were privately funded and his explorations and discoveries have been ranked as some of the most important in the history of Antarctica. He was a great leader and a scientific observer of note (see Readers Digest “Antarctica” for more in-depth details). Even back then, Charcot was concerned about how the whales might fare if man continued hunting them in earnest. Much of what he predicted is coming true.
He is not the only early explorer to put forward his concerns about man and the environment.
The worst journey in the world
Apsley Cherry-Garrard was a man amongst men. He was with Scott on his final expedition in 1911 – but not one of the party who perished getting back from the South Pole. He wrote a book “The Worst Journey in the World” which covered a side expedition that he and two others undertook in the winter prior to the Pole attempt. The men with him were “Uncle” Bill Wilson and “Birdie Bowers” – both of whom perished on the way back from the Pole with Scott only a few months later.
Their aim was to search for emperor penguin eggs to endeavour to prove a connection between reptilian scales and feathers. They set off from their base camp at Cape Evans on Ross Island in the mid winter of 1911 to walk to Cape Crozier, where the only known breeding colony of emperors was thought to be. This was a distance of 105 kilometres each way.
As Cherry-Garrard stated in his book “and so we started just after mid winter on the weirdest birds-nesting expedition that has ever been or ever will be”. It was an awful journey.
“Antarctic exploration is seldom as bad as you imagine, seldom as bad as it sounds. But this journey had beggared our language: no word could express its horror.”
They eventually collected 6 eggs, broke some on the way back, and finally made it with 3 - after 5 weeks with the temperatures down to minus 61 degrees centigrade.
“Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.”
Cherry-Garrard proved himself to himself. After the First World War he wrote his account, which included the following, as pertinent today as it was then.
“We cannot stop knowledge: we must use it well or perish. And we must do our tiny scrap to see that those who do use it are sound in mind and body, especially in mind, of good education, with a background of tradition, a knowledge of human nature and of history: with a certain standard of decency which inspires trust: with disinterestedness and self-control.
Plato said the good ruler is a reluctant man. The really wise man knows what an awful thing it is to govern, and keeps away from it. Our problems are not new: they are as old as the men who hunted the prehistoric hills. When they hit one another on the head with stones the matter was confined to a few caves: now it shakes a crowded world more complicated than any watch.
Human nature does not change: it becomes more dangerous. Those who guide the world now may think they are doing quite well: so perhaps did the dodo.
Man, having destroyed the whales, may end up by destroying himself. The penguins may end like prehistoric reptiles from which they sprang. All may follow the mammoths and dinosaurs into fossilized oblivion…”
Food for thought! I wonder how much we have learnt in all the years since then? It seems not much.
1800 hrs: It’s a wonderful evening. The dark Antarctic sea is like a mirror – scattered as far as the eye can see with pieces of ice of all shapes and sizes. Our anchorage is very quiet, except for the occasional rather harsh cries from the gentoo penguins nearby. The wind has all but gone. The evening is well advanced and the coming night might be quite cold – but with the brightest stars imaginable in the black polar sky.
Until tomorrow,
Best wishes from all onboard.
Peter.
Sir Peter Blake
"Having vision is not enough. Change comes through realising the vision and turning it into a reality. It is easy to espouse worthy goals, values and policies; the hard part is implementation."
Learn about Sir Peter Blake and his journeys around the globe